Wordstrike!

29072010

The Asian American Writers Workshop has just announced what their calling Wordstrike, or a boycott of Arizona by writers (and mostly writers of color), in protest of the racist / xenophobic SB 1070. Some of my favorite writers and/ or writing teachers, including Jessica Hagedorn, Junot Diaz and Chris Abani, have signed on. I’m also heartened by these images of the protests happening in Arizona right now. I also stumbled across the video below on Twitter last night, which was ironic given that I’m in San Antonio right now at Macondo workshop in San Antonio, home of the Alamo. It’s a great video that draws the connections between pro-slavery, white supremacist forces and the anti-immigrant forces at play in Arizona and elsewhere. I love how it illustrates how African-American and Latino folks have more in common around this issue and its history than not. Now I wish someone would make a good short video relating this racist Arizona law and others like it to the plight of Asian and other immigrants in the US.